World News - Drought Comes Again to East Africa, but Victims and Governments Remain Unprepared

They lie in battered beds, hooked up to IV drips, their skeletal mothers beside them. Their cries are barely audible for now, but their woes won't end when they have gained weight. All of their families' wealth their cattle and goats are dead. When drought comes, the very young and the very old are the first to suffer. But according to the latest U.N. figures, they are only the most visible of 11.5 million East Africans who don't have enough to eat. Hunger strikes Africa for reasons as diverse as its 53 countries drought, locusts, government policies that wreck the agricultural economy. In East Africa, which includes Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, drought arrives every few years, usually predicted months in advance. Drought does not have to cause hunger, but inevitably it does. ... http://abcnews.go.com

Attacks by insurgents on Iraq's oil industry cost the country $6.25bn (£3.6bn) in lost revenue during 2005, according to the Iraqi oil ministry. A total of 186 attacks were carried out on oil sites last year, claiming the lives of 47 engineers and 91 police and security guards, a spokesman said. Iraq's government has been struggling in the wake of a violent insurgency following the US-led invasion in 2003. US officials say the cost of rebuilding Iraq could reach more than $56bn. US Special Inspector-General Stuart Bowen earlier this month warned that Iraq's rebuilding was being undermined by continuing insurgent attacks. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4729178.stm

Aid from many countries has been offered for a Philippines village buried under a landslide on Friday, but hopes of finding survivors are dim. Sixty-eight people have been confirmed dead and 1,800 remain missing from the village of Guinsaugon on Leyte island. Australia and China have pledged thousands of dollars in aid and US marines are helping dig at the site. Efforts to find survivors are focusing on the buried village's school, a Filipino military officer told the BBC. But, he said, "the exact location of the school cannot be found because the landslide pushed everything away". Captain Roman Dioso, an air force officer heading a team of rescue workers, said there was still some chance of finding survivors. "With past rescue missions we have found survivors eight days after a mudslide so we are keeping our hopes alive. You don't know the resilience of human beings," he told the BBC News website. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4730154.stm

A deep freeze stretched from the Rockies to New England on Sunday as workers tried to restore power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses left dark by fierce wind that also was blamed for four deaths. Rochester had a low of 10 degrees Sunday morning, and wind of up to 17 mph made it feel like almost 10 below zero, the National Weather Service said. In the Upper Midwest, the 8 a.m. reading of 2 below zero at Duluth, Minn., combined with 17 mph wind for a wind chill of 23 below. As far south as Arkansas, Little Rock had a Sunday morning low of just 18. Farther west, Alliance, Neb., bottomed out at 8 below, the weather service said. The frigid temperatures forced officials in Madison, Wis., which had a high of just 3 degrees on Saturday, to cancel the "Polar Plunge" into a lake, a fundraiser for the Special Olympics. Hayward had a low of 26 below zero on Saturday. ...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1637987

The U.S. military confirmed Sunday that 10 U.S. troops died when two transport helicopters crashed into the sea last week off the coast of the African nation of Djibouti. The CH-53E choppers, carrying a dozen crew and troops from a U.S. counterterrorism force, went down Friday in the Gulf of Aden, near the northern coastal town of Ras Siyyan. Two crew members were rescued. The search for the others was called off Saturday when the military said it had accounted for the 10 troops but it declined to reveal their fate until family members were notified. The troops included U.S. Marines and two Air Force airmen, according to a statement by the U.S.-led Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa. ...http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1637762

Ismail Haniya, Hamas's choice for Palestinian prime minister, said "everything will be on the table" when he and other leaders of the group meet Mahmoud Abbas on forming a government. On Sunday, Haniya confirmed he had accepted Hamas's nomination and said: "I pray to God to help me to shoulder this great responsibility... to serve the Palestinian cause until the return of the Palestinian rights." Haniya, 43, is widely viewed by Palestinians as a pragmatist who has forged good relations with rival factions. Hamas crushed the long-dominant Fatah faction in the parliamentary election on 25 January. The group presented Haniya's candidacy to Abbas, the Palestinian president, on Sunday, paving the way for talks on forming a government. ...http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/59847765-6FF7-45EE-9831-889600167AFB.htm